David Sedaris - Barrel Fever and Other Stories

"That was over at Seven Fifty-Seven, wasn't it?" the foreman asked.

The window men nodded their heads.

"Seven Fifty-Seven's got those Magnum Double Hungs that start eighteen inches from the floor. Christ, that's low. That Clapton character should have had a goddamned child guard and that's all there is to it!"

The window men agreed.

Then the window washer told a story about a young guy, first day on the job, who fell six stories while washing windows that could have been cleaned from the inside. "This kid didn't know an Acorn Tilt and Turn from a hole in the ground. So he's out there putting his hooks into get this the awning rings! Goddamned awning rings couldn't support the weight of a house cat but he digs in and WHAM falls six floors."

The window men shared a moment of silence.

I asked if the young man died and they all moaned, exhausted by my stupidity.

"Of course he died," the window washer said. "You can't take more than a four-story fall, not in this town anyway."

Then Jeffrey Lee got off the phone and said that, given a choice, he'd rather fall from a higher floor as it would allow more time for his life to flash before his eyes.

The window men said that all depends on the life you led. And then they changed the topic and began discussing women.

In today's mail I received two copies ofGiantess along with a letter from Hank, who writes, "Please keep in mind that stories featuring continuous, spectacular growth are among the most popular with our readers." The magazines contain stories titled "A Growing Girl," "Blimper" and "The Big Date." There are illustrations and ads for videos, one of which is titledTrample and Crush. This is a publication for men who long to explore a vagina the way others might visit the Luray Caverns. Reading it over I noticed that, once they start growing, the women become very moody and aggressive and the knee-high men seem to love it.

My sister once gave me a magazine called Knocked Up and Gun Toting, which featured nude, pregnant women sporting firearms: pistols, hunting rifles, Uzis you name it. I don't imagine Knocked Up and Gun Toting has a very wide circulation but I'm certain its subscribers are devoted and happy in their own way. Still, though, like with Giantess, I have a hard time sharing their fetish. I shudder at the thought of nipples the size of manhole covers. Beneath the surface the Giantess reader seems to be a man who longs for his infancy. He looks back fondly at the time he was dwarfed by his mother and scolded for soiling himself. And that's just about the last experience I care to reflect upon. Sure I received a few spankings but I never considered them a high point. I moved ahead and got on with my life. Didn't I?

I WAS carrying out the Rosenblatt's garbage this afternoon when the maid from the next apartment closed the door behind her, straightened her white uniform, and pushed the button for the elevator. This is the twelfth floor, four apartments per level and only one elevator, so it usually takes a while. I watched as the maid was joined by two young children accompanied by an Irish nanny. As they waited, the nanny reached into her canvas bag and handed the boy a bag of Cheetos, which he opened and immediately emptied onto the floor, screaming, "I wanted the CURLY kind. Don't you know ANYTHING?"

The nanny lowered her head while the maid and I locked eyes and shrugged our shoulders as if to say, "What can you do?" The elevator arrived and they boarded, leaving behind an orange mat of uncurly Cheetos, which will be crushed by the twelfth-floor tenants until a janitor is dispatched to sweep them up.

I have seen this next-door maid three or four times before. She is a refrigerator-sized dark-skinned woman wearing loafers with the backs cut away to make them more comfortable. I see her and think of Lena Payne.

My mother was never much of a housekeeper and it drove me to distraction, the chaos of our home. Five years after moving to Raleigh we still had Mayflower boxes in the living room. I would return home from school, place my coat and books neatly in my bedroom, activate the vacuum cleaner and set to work gathering my sisters' clothing, their half-empty glasses, and the bowls of potato chip crumbs left before the television set, wash-ing dishes, polishing furniture, and thinking thatit wasn't fair. I had been switched at birth and carried back to the wrong household. Somewhere my natural family spent their days observing strict laboratory conditions, wondering what had become of me. My own bedroom was immaculate, a shrine. I cleaned it every day. My sisters were not allowed to cross the threshold. They stood in the hallway, observing me as if I were an exotic zoo animal displayed in his natural habitat.

While my mother was pregnant with her sixth child, my father finally gave in and allowed her to hire a housekeeper one day a week. When Lena was introduced I thought that finally we were getting somewhere. I left for school as my mother turned on the portable TV and handed her a cup of coffee. I returned from school seven hours later to find an ironing board in the kitchen, Mom and Lena in roughly the same position watch-ing TV and drinking coffee.

It struck me as the perfect union: the two laziest people on the face of the earth coming together to watch "Mike Douglas" and "General Hospital." I ran to touch the vacuum cleaner and found it stone cold. It wasn't fair.

Normally Mom would drive Lena to the shopping center, where she caught a ride home with a friend, but one day there was something good on TV so Lena stayed late. My mother offered to take her home, and I went along for the ride. We drove past the Raleigh I knew, beyond the paved streets and onto narrow dirt roads lined with shacks actual shacks, the type I had seen inLife magazine. When our station wagon pulled up, Lena's shack emptied and seven children gathered on the porch, shielding their eyes with their hands. The yard was bald and dusty, populated with chickens. I had never before seen a live chicken and decided I would like to have one as a pet. Lena said that I could have one if I could catch it. Identifying the chicken of my choice I immediately pictured her living in my own grassy yard, prancing for grain. Her name would be Penny, and every day she would kneel down and thank God that she lived with me and not with Lena. I thought that this chicken might come to me if I spoke to her in a comforting voice. I thought you could convince a chicken with the promise of a better life. When that didn't work I decided I might tackle a chicken and I tried, again and again. I dove for her, soiling my school clothes in clouds of dirt and dust. Finally I gave up. Standing to wipe the clay off my face I turned to see everyone laughing at me: Lena, her seven children, even my own mother doubled over in the front seat of the car. I remember turning toward the shack yelling, "I don't need your filthy chickens. We buy our own from the store."

In the car on the way home my mother tried in vain to convey the shame I had brought against her but I wasn't listening. My only response was to swear off chicken for the next few weeks. Whenever one was served I pictured the steaming carcass raising a cartoon head and laughing at me. It was years before I thought of things differently.

This afternoon I went to G.L.'s apartment to clean his venetian blinds, which had been soiled during a fire. I first met this man last week when I was sent to unpack his books and arrange them on the shelves in alphabetical order. He's got quite a library: leather-bound editions of Jane Austen and Emile Zola sandwiching several cookbooks and countless manuals devoted to the study of sadomasochistic sex. This morning G.L. answered the door in his bathrobe, drinking black coffee from a mug shaped to resemble a boot. He is not a pleasant man but seems to get along fine in the world as long as he has his way. He led me to the nearest window and suggested I use Formula 409 and paper towel, but that would have taken me weeks. Having experience with blinds I thought it might be quicker and more productive if I took them down and washed them in the tub. I thought he would argue with me but instead he took off his bathrobe saying, "Sure, whatever." He stood for a moment in his underpants before walking into the bathroom, where he ran water into the sink, preparing to shave something. G.L.'s bathroom is tiny and I thought he might need some privacy, so I just sort of stood around the living room until he called out, "Hey, are you going to clean those blinds or not? I'm not made of money."